Transcript
Speaker: A lot of times I'm working with an undiagnosed addict and it's harder for somebody with food to see that. They decide to power down a bunch of Oreos today, they're not going to get behind the wheel and kill somebody because of it. Right? If they decide to go to the drive-thru today and eat a bunch of stuff they shouldn't do, they're not going to have CPS showing up their door tomorrow about the safety of their kids.
Speaker: This is the Home of Health Spam podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: Chenille Green, welcome to the Home of Spam podcast. Yes, thank you for having me. I am looking forward to this conversation. I think it is on one of the more timely subjects at the moment that lot of people are talking about. But before we cover what that is and why it is timely, how would you describe yourself?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm in a lively bariatric coach um and food addiction coach. That's definitely what I would describe myself as. Okay. And so bariatric ah surgery, maybe it's been around for a long time, but maybe just let's start there and define it and explain it for listeners who may not be as familiar with it. Absolutely. So the word bariatric, I think we think of the surgery, but it is two different words put together. And one is weight and the other one is as medicine, basically. So bariatric medicine, bariatric surgery is the procedure, but GLP ones would technically be classed as a bariatric medicine. So they're kind of all housed in the same space. Bariatric surgery has been around for a long time and was probably the first time it was really explored in the fifties. got a little bit better in the 80s and the 90s, the lap band came out. A lot of us probably became very familiar with that, that approach, which is not very common today. Today, the traditional method is through the gastric sleeve, which is a surgery I had four years ago, that is 80% of stomach.
Speaker: of the stomach The bypass, which is probably the more predominant procedure today, um that one is going to create a new stomach and it's going to bypass the first intestine. And then we have these more advanced surgeries today, the dudonel switch and the SATI, which are for much higher BMIs. And they're kind of a combination of both surgeries where we're removing 80% of the stomach and we're bypassing certain channels of the intestine. And so the approach is that you're eating less.
Speaker: You cannot eat as much and you lose a lot more weight quickly. But compared to the lap band, the lap band was like ah a band that was placed around the stomach. The big, big difference they have found is that with the surgery itself, with the removal, there is a metabolic change taking place in the body on all fronts. Your hormones are changing.
Speaker: your satiety cues change, all those things in a positive way. Absolutely. The lap band didn't necessarily provide that other than having that physical band there because the stomach houses a hormone called Gremlin, which is like tells you when you're hungry. And when you remove the stomach or create a new one, majority of that is gone, but it doesn't just go forever. If you have the surgery, you know, there's a certain time where you're going to start to feel hungrier again, but you are physically still limited in what you consume. So you have to be mindful on what you're eating at that point. You know, regain is a ah big part of this conversation as well, because it's not a it's not a guaranteed with the surgery at all.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think that's where there might be a lot of. correlations along with the GLP-1 side of there may be some physical changes that come about because of a surgery or because of a medication you're taking, but there's still a psychological component for a lot of people here. So can can you touch on that?
Speaker: Yeah, I would say that is the missing piece of the conversation is um patient responsibility. And I think the best way to explain it to any audience is when you think of a ah lung cancer diagnosis that may have resulted from cigarette smoking. If you continue to smoke cigarettes, we all have an opinion immediately on this idea. Like, what are you doing? You shouldn't. That's that's not going to help your outcome here. And in the space of the surgery, you know, we get these smaller stomachs. We get these metabolic changes. But if the diet doesn't shift, if what happens at home doesn't change, you will fall into the 50% who regain their weight after the surgery. event yeah And that's...
Speaker: That's a very scary number. And I'll tell you, Andrew, I've heard it in the spaces of surgeons that some will even claim 90%. And I'll tell you why that number exists is that they don't have a good tracking system for this. If I regain my weight, am I going to come back to my surgeon's office?
Speaker: Probably not. I'm going to end up doing Weight Watchers for the 10th time. going to grab a personal trainer. Right. I'm going to like be this new person tomorrow morning that never has never worked for me before. You know, they don't end up back in front of the surgeon to get that statistic. The follow up care.
Speaker: There's no like requirement on coming back in and and showcasing the numbers. So it's so hard to say how successful it truly is. I work almost exclusively with women who have regained their weight, although I love working with people before the surgery. i think we get to do magical stuff there, but they often find me afterwards and they are not in their surgeon's office. and They are not reporting back those numbers. And defining success is another thing, like how much is considered success, how much is considered to regain. It is normal to see a five to 10 pound regain um around year two. And that kind of being your happy space. Those things are very normal. But 50 percent is a pretty strong case for for regain. That's not in that five to 10 pound window.
Speaker: And I mean, it's it's not zero risk, right? You're going under a knife. if You're going into surgery. So there's risk. There's cost. There's side effects. myself included, these are the sickest people to be having surgery. rate Like if you 500 pounds and you're going under, the risks are vastly different than someone going under. I think plastic surgery is such an interesting case because they always have these BMI requirements because they're going to put you under. And that's what their concern is. Like we don't want to put you under for an extended period of time and something go wrong.
Speaker: Right now, the sleeve surgery is 35 minutes. So you're not under a terribly long time. Bypass is about an hour. But still, there's a lot of other risks afterwards. you know i don't want to like ever say that these risks outweigh the outcome because to stay morbidly obese, you have a a much scarier outcome than embracing what are probably the more common annoying things like acid reflux with the sleeve, dumping syndrome with the bypass, you know a stricture, You know, you could get an ulcer, but sometimes those ulcers come from deciding to smoke again after these surgeries. But there are ah risks involved and why a lifestyle change is so necessary to come with these surgeries. And it's something that I don't want to say it doesn't get hit at home in the surgical centers. I think they try their best. But when you've been dieting since you've been a teenager, this feels great.
Speaker: Like it's that last resort, like I've done everything but this. So this is just a, this is my new diet. I'm going to do this one. I hope this one works. And they still followed the same protocol that they did with, you know, Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers and Herbalife and et cetera, cetera. The same sort of mental missing piece that was needed in all those other attempts.
Speaker: Yeah. And so there are two things I really want to dig on there. And this is where I think there are a lot of parallels with the GLP ones, but the, the first part, the mindset and the coaching and the education prior to the thing. So yeah whether it is a surgery or it's going on a medication like a GLP one, it isn't literally flip a switch and overnight you lose 30% of your weight. Right.
Speaker: In terms of the arc of a life, it effectively is, right? Like all of a sudden this thing has fundamentally changed, but the whole architecture of my life, where I continue to go to dinner, how I shop for groceries, who I associate with, all that stays the same before and after. And so what does, when you work with people, you said before, what does that education, that process look like for you?
Speaker: Yeah, it's ironically not terribly different from how I've approached my life as a recovering alcoholic. Like I, number one, acceptance that there's a disease that has to be treated. This isn't a personality trait anymore. It's a disease. And most of us who have been morbid obese never had that official conversation. Like today I'm going to be putting this on your medical records.
Speaker: that you're morbidly obese. We don't really get pressured to it until like, well, now, okay, now you're you've gone from pre-diabetic to a full type two, so here's the next protocol. like It's not even like what's going at home. We've gotten the one-sheeters that are like, here's what your diet should look like. We've never lacked this information. It's not a lack of knowledge for a majority of us, right? It's not a lack of knowledge.
Speaker: So you have to look at your entire encompassing life because typically at home, your life is structured for the way you've designed it now. And at the rewrite, like we have to rewrite everything.
Speaker: We have to, we have to, to, Think of who's realistically can be this person. Like, for example, I'm not a morning person. I'm not a morning person, but I have to eat breakfast today. I have learned that if I don't eat breakfast, the whole day is off for me, but I don't like breakfast. I don't like it. I've never liked it in the morning. And it seems to be a common feature among everyone I worked with. And I most certainly don't want to make it in the morning. Like you have to be kidding me. Like if I get up at five, I'm not going downstairs and making eggs.
Speaker: I know this. I can't force myself to be this person because it will not last forever. So I have to plan for the reality, which is I won't do it in the morning. So let's do it in the middle of the day or let's do it in the afternoon when I've got that little...
Speaker: perk. Let's prep for just a few days. And then I just had to repeat that behavior until it became my normal thing. i have breakfast today without ever second guessing it anymore. It's just what I do. but I had to be realistic about what my, my circumstances are in my brain at five zero in the morning because I can't change everything. So I had to do that. But We often surround ourselves with people who are not necessarily on the same journey. I tell my clients all the time, like, this is your husband's 28th episode of watching you do this, right? You've had the surgery and now we've regained and all the other attempts. He's seen this. He's not on this this show.
Speaker: He ain't in this episode. Do not drag him into it. Do not. I mean, as a woman, we don't want our husbands to say, Hey, I found this like thing I'm going to do. I'm going to lose some weight. You should do it with me. and We would just blow a gasket on that suggestion if we're not in the mindset. So we cannot ask the same thing out of them either. This is our journey.
Speaker: And we can be like a silent example. I can't go into a bar and tell everybody you're an alcoholic, you're an alcoholic, you're an alcoholic. right That's not going to make anyone feel good. And the same with making those choices at home.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a really strong point on the, it's not a lack of knowledge, right? It says this line of, if all it took was knowledge, everybody would be a billionaire with the six pack, right? There's so much knowledge required to to get the results.
Speaker: And yet you can only do so much at once. And so when you talk about the the food environment at home and how you do shopping and when you out to eat and the people you're associated with, like all the different pieces,
Speaker: It can become overwhelming and people say, it's too much. I do nothing. And so do you see a sequencing that works better than others for saying, okay, here's, here's where we're going to start. We're going to change this thing and let's do that for a month or two. And then we'll get to this thing and then this, and then, then we'll have the surgery and these things already be in place. And then we can start working on this next thing. What what does that path look So we have a pattern at the rewrite. um When you enroll into our our program, it's four months or 12 months. Ideally, we get somebody for a year because, I mean, we're doing some massive work here. But we start just for the first month on transitioning the diet. So the example of a woman who regained her weight, because that is like prominently who I will see, you know, we got to look at what happened. We have them log everything they're eating for a week with no bias to what's happened. We just got to do the inventory. Don't change anything. Let's get realistic about what's going on. And then the first week we just start simple. We have them eat breakfast for the first week. I don't want to talk about calories or macros. I want you to chew 25 grams of protein in the morning because for these particular types of, of clients, they have been sold diet culture food on this journey. So like they're not eating real food. Their their logs are almost identical. They're a protein shake. They're a protein bar. They're their Chick-fil-A. And then maybe if I'm lucky, we're cooking a meal at home for the family. But it's just a lot of crap.
Speaker: And so the second week, we then start talking about like macros. But I think the quality of the food to me is the most valuable thing. like if you're If you're eating too many fats because you're having salmon and tuna, who cares? But if you're eating too many fats because you're just powering through you know all of your kids' st string cheese and a can of peanut butter, like that's different.
Speaker: And then we start to roll into week three where we talk about fiber. I think that's one of the misunderstood aspects of nutrition for bariatric patients is that we want to stay full longer. Fiber is going to do that.
Speaker: And with these smaller stomachs, we don't keep food in there as long as we did before surgery either. So back to that quality. So we talk about fiber. And then after a whole month of getting the food right, then we actually start to talk about the systems and structures at home. So it has to be slow and steady. And when we come into talking about that at home, we first want to feel where everybody's stress currently lies.
Speaker: Is it is it at home? Is it at the job? Like, where do you bear responsibility? Where their, you know, moments of acceptance and understanding where their boundaries not being placed?
Speaker: A lot of my clients are in very complicated marriages that. Sometimes you have to have a ah real crossing moment about what your life is going to look like in five years if somebody else isn't going to change.
Speaker: Sometimes people have jobs they don't like. They have children at home with autism, and that makes it more challenging. i mean, there's a lot of non-negotiables that we have to to work on, how we can build around that. It's very unique experience to each person that I'm with, but we have to just do one thing at a time.
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Speaker: So first on nutrient density and nutrition more broadly, as I understand it, some of our satiating signals come from once we have an adequate amount of nutrients, whether that's the macros like protein or fat or the micronutrients that we need to survive. And so...
Speaker: a story I've seen people tell themselves, whether it's on a GLP one or a bariatric surgery of, well, since I'm eating so much less, like I can eat crap, I can eat whatever I want. And so I, they almost go the wrong direction. Absolutely. mostly Explicitly go the wrong direction because say, well, since I'm having so little, I can eat junk food, but you're almost starving yourself of the required nutrients. So How do you see that education process go for understanding, look, this is why nutrition is so important, whether it's bariatric or it's for a GLP one on that front end.
Speaker: So they don't think, oh this is just like a a cheat code. Yeah, I mean, we really scream it to the masses in our community. We're probably one of the only spaces in the bariatric world that really like push hard on the quality of the food. And I love to just explain it to them. Like there are certain foods that are not made to be in your pouch very long.
Speaker: They're not made. They're made for you to continue to eat. When you understand how digestion works, right? When you understand that protein is going to have to be broken down in the stomach, that for the most part, carbohydrates are are broken down in the mouth. um You know, fats do provide some satiety, but the quality there matters. Slider foods is the term that they often use in this community, is that foods that they can continuously eat and not feel the restriction on their pouch.
Speaker: And so people will say, i need to do a pouch reset. Like there's no fucking button in there. You're like, you cannot off and on this thing. Right. And what they'll say is that i'm going to go back to liquids from right after I had my surgery. And I'm like, no that's like a horrendous idea. Like going back to liquids wasn't the problem. And they don't understand even why those stages exist after surgery. Like you're on liquids because there's very little requirement of digestion on a healing stomach.
Speaker: That's the only reason you're there. Right. And then we're going to bring in like purees and soft foods to like, you know, slowly bring our stomach back into a healthy place where it can tolerate whole foods. So when someone says I stretch my pouch out, I'm like, go home tonight, make chicken in the best way you love it. Make a vegetable in the best way you love it and see how much you can eat of that. And then all of a sudden, what do you know? They're like six bites into their chicken and they're like, oh my gosh, right? And this is the same person who can put down, you know, two protein bars and a bag of Quest chips and still be like, I'm hungry. and
Speaker: there's also a lot of people who live on um artificial sweeteners in our community, especially with the waters. We don't digest water as easily after surgery it has to do with the osmolarity of the water. And so the first assumption to do is that I'll add,
Speaker: Crystal like I'll add an artificial sweetener. And so put that with the shakes, with the bars, with the diet food. They're consuming sucralose from like morning to night. And there are studies that show that you will have an increase of hunger with sucralose for some people. And it just seems to be this kind of crowd right here that has it. And I experienced it myself. I was seven months post out putting meals in my water left and right.
Speaker: And I log all my food. And I also time logged my food so I could see what time I was eating. And I was like, oh my gosh, every time I drink water, I'm hungry. 30 minutes later, hungry.
Speaker: And I couldn't figure it out until I got curious enough. And this was way before the rewrite existed. And I got curious and did research and asked questions. And sure enough, like I'm somebody who gets hungrier after superlose. And I've tested this theory every way. and it doesn't seem to matter. I eat something with that and I'm hungry 30 to 45 minutes later again. And with the bariatric population, it's in our protein shakes. It's in, it's even in some of our vitamins that we're supposed to take. Like it's just on a ah scale that ah the average person isn't being exposed to.
Speaker: Well, even if you're not tasting it, if it's in something like a vitamin, your gut is getting it sending it. And also that that is the danger there. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. that That makes a lot of sense on the nutritional education, I guess.
Speaker: On this, and there's more questions I want to ask there. So maybe. On the mindset piece, this is, I don't know if you know this ah psychologist, Alfred Adler. And you know there's a lot of people that say, I am this way because of X, right? Like you look back, these things that have made me in this way. And he came at it of the exact opposite way.
Speaker: said, people are how they are and see themselves as X. And then they go back to find justification in stories. They're like, here's why i am this way. And I've seen it. over and over, especially, you know, I'm a certain age, I'm hitting middle age, i've seen it men and women that will say, I can't fix this until these other things are fixed, right? Like, like the example you gave of, well, my husband needs to be on board for me to do it. Or, well, I can't address these things until you address those things.
Speaker: And it's just an excuse for inaction. this is why above my desk, i always keep a sign. Other people aren't the problem, right? Like I can only do the work in here. How, when you're dealing with those situations where it's a difficult family environment or work environment or things of like, okay, well, let's understand what's actually in your control. What is your locus of control that you can change and and adapt to? And then what are the things you accept? And what are the things you say? I'm just not going to accept that. I'm going to move my environment.
Speaker: yeah, to each person, that's a unique decision. i in recovery and from alcoholism, like I have watched, you know, it i it's like ah it's a, it's a, it's it's a thin line. Sometimes I feel like I'm dancing between like women I sponsor in a and what I do for my job. Right. And I will see that with an alcoholic, I can drive the point home real quick.
Speaker: where if If let's say husband, he's drinking every night, she's trying to stay sober. This isn't going work. That is the reality we got going on here. You aren't going to stay sober in that environment. You've proven that you can stay sober in that environment. What can we do? Right.
Speaker: And those are hard conversations to have because like, oh, just leave your marriage is not just some easy situation. thing that somebody can just do. And over here, I ah cannot take that same direct approach that I usually want to. And it because they're not understanding that sometimes we're talking about an addictive disease here, not just the the obesity factor, but the addition of the addiction in nature. Like if you can't be around it and they're not going to change, are you going to sacrifice your future? Like you have to be very honest
Speaker: with yourself and honesty with ourselves is the hardest because I think we have sold ourselves the biggest lies throughout our journeys, you know, and also when we put blame on somebody else, we have to wait for that person to change in order for us to be able to change. And then it just becomes a waiting game and it feeds right into the addictive mindset.
Speaker: You know what, until he's ready to do this, there's no point in trying anyways. Right. So a lot of times I'm I'm working with an undiagnosed addict and I do feel like addiction is self diagnosis. So I can't tell them that, hey, you are doing some addict like things here. And it's harder for somebody with food to see that because they're not you know, they decide to to power down a bunch of Oreos today. They're not going to get behind the wheel and kill somebody because of it.
Speaker: Right. If they decide to go to the drive through today and and eat a bunch of stuff they shouldn't do, they're not going to have CPS showing up their door tomorrow about the safety of their kids. Like the consequences are so much longer, but also like it's a very polarizing jail to be in to see your life go past you for those choices.
Speaker: Right. When I was drinking and using all the time, like it was clear cut that I didn't have the things I wanted. Like my life was messy and icky. When I realized that my relationship with food was was the same, the same way. And I reflect a lot of the things I couldn't do or didn't feel confident to do in my youth weren't because of my drinking. My drinking just made it more tolerable to get through that.
Speaker: So it's it's a harder process for people to understand the food addiction part of it. But a lot of our clients, when they get into the rewrite, they haven't like, yeah, oh shit, that's me.
Speaker: Like, these are the things I'm doing. There's a lot I want to unpack and dig into there. So I recently read the big book to better understand that whole mindset and this idea of alcoholism is a spiritual sickness.
Speaker: And I mean, maybe that's true for any addiction of there's a hole and it's just what you're trying to fill that hole with. And and the thing that really stuck with me longer was the beginning of Anna Karenina, Leah Tolstoy has this line of all happy families are the same. All unhappy unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.
Speaker: And idea that to be a happy family, you have to have all these components right. But if anyone is off, right there's disrespect or there financial issues or there's you know whatever tension, it makes the family unhappy. Any of these things can cause it.
Speaker: And the thing with addiction, especially alcoholism, but I think it's true with a person with a food addiction or otherwise, is when you have that, you have one problem. You have one problem. This is the problem. And if I fix this, everything gets better. And once you fix that one problem, you have all the problems that everybody else in the world has. All of a sudden, now you have financial problems. You have the tension. you have You have everything else in the world. But before, you could just believe that it was just this one thing. If I can fix this one thing, everything's easy. You're like, no. You were using that to ignore all these other really difficult things.
Speaker: And so you don't want people to give up hope on saying, hey, once you do this, it's going to get a lot harder. But you somehow need to prepare them for it of like, look, you're going to get this magic. You're going to get this magic pill, GLP-1, it's going to lose its weight. Or you're going to get the surgery, you're going to lose it But all that's going to surface is all the other problems. i don't know if you saw the the show ah This Is Us.
Speaker: where she, there's a morbidly obese character in it. And you thought the whole issue was her weight, her weight, her weight. And no, like there were all these other issues. Like the weight was one thing, but it was the life were the issues.
Speaker: And how do you, in the coaching, prepare people for that? I mean, I just tell them straight out. I've, I've said so many times that the surgery is not going to fix your shitty marriage. It's not going to fix the job you don't like. It's not going to fix the the sick parent you're taking care of. Like those things aren't going to be resolved.
Speaker: OK, it might give you the confidence to leave somebody. It might give you the the confidence to go back to school or get a new job. It might make you have better mobility to help with the situation at home with the family that member that's sick. You can those things it might help with. Right. It's extending your life.
Speaker: That's what's going to happen here. But the ego is the biggest problem. The ego was my problem, right? Like I didn't realize i was an alcoholic until I stopped drinking.
Speaker: And then I had to experience the ism, which is the I self in me. Like my ego is the problem. My delusion is the problem that I'm terminally unique problem. You know, if if you had a life like mine, if you had this happen and that happened, you would do the things that I do.
Speaker: Right. And the victim means that I spoke so fluently had to be dropped at the door when I wanted to make any changes. A lot of the gals I work with come in with multiple generational versions of victim means that they have been holding on And we have to drop it.
Speaker: I call it the 50 pound rock like. you know, it's like treading in the water and and trying to get on a boat and you're trying to carry this 50 pound rock with you. What are those things that you're trying to take into every chapter? You're not willing to let go. How have they defined you?
Speaker: Like what happens if you let them go? And it's daily reprieve. Like I can't just take my baggage of trauma and say, you know what? I'm done with you. See you later. It's going to show up. It's going to show up in my marriage. It's going to show up in my relations. And I got to stop and check it.
Speaker: I got to like talk to my sponsor. I have to do inventory work. I just have to acknowledge that it's in this room. I can't ignore it. It might not go away forever. It's over there. And sometimes my behaviors reflect that I know it's over there. And I just check them and I try a little bit different next time. And with the girls I work with here and men.
Speaker: It's the same thing. It's not going to be a perfect journey. And there's so much cool stuff you get from taking the leap to the surgery. I have had complete 360 of my life. Everything about me is different. All of it.
Speaker: And I love the life I have today enough to make the changes every day to stay here. So sometimes we have to get rid of those rocks that can be moved in our life that are holding us back. If you want to get to where you want and it will not be easy, but man, once it's done, it will be fun because most things that we love in our life are scary at first, everything.
Speaker: So intuitively, It would make sense that this kind of coaching, this kind of program, this kind of support, especially before you start a medication, before you go in for surgery, but certainly as you're having it and after, would lead to higher success rates a year out, two years out, five years out.
Speaker: Are there any published data on that? Can you see, hey, when people get this kind of support, here's what it looks like versus if they don't, here's what it looks like? So the answer is absolutely no, because the the surgical world is very messy. Like I said earlier, they don't do a great job at collecting data and because food addiction is not recognized in the DSM-5. So they're most certainly not gonna entertain this conversation. um I have friends that are surgeons. i'm I'm part of associations with the surgeons and it's not a conversation I can come into the room and boldly have like I'm having with you because they are data driven. There is talks about it being added to the DSM-6 as ultra processed food addiction. And they're going to come in with a harm reduction model, which is very similar to how we're already treating binge eating disorder, anorexia and bulimia, which I personally don't think is the solution. i don't think a harm reduction model works. works. I think you have to figure out what your problem foods are. I know what my problem foods are. My problem foods are sugar and artificial sweeteners. I cannot consume them.
Speaker: End of my end a story for me. You have to figure out what that is for each person. Some people can't do flour, right? Some people won't do wheat. I haven't had that, that sort of issue, but I do have it with those other things. um And so if they don't have that part recognized, it's hard for them to send people in the right space. And We are a very unique in that we're all patient-led ourselves. I'm a patient. Every one of my coaches is a patient. Every client success coordinator, basically our sales team, all patients. all Everyone has been through the program. We've only hired outs in our program. And that's been the missing delivery.
Speaker: Like we've all had that experience of like that super educated nutritionist who never had the weight problem. It just doesn't hit. And like this, the same thing as being an alcoholic, I could not sit in a therapist's office and get someone to understand that I can't just stop drinking.
Speaker: when I pick up a drink and I've never been referred to AA, even though it was on my record, I had an issue with alcohol, my liver was reflecting, there were some problems with my drinking. Nobody suggested i go to AA and in 2019, I went into an abortion clinic with the shakes to get an abortion. And there was no suggestion there that I look into not drinking anymore. Like it's just not brought up. It's not the suggested thing, right? Because then we're talking about maybe God, at least that's the assumption to the general public. You've read the book and you know, that's not the, the,
Speaker: where it's going. But the centers are not focused on the this this because it's not backed up research-wise. In our community, we see an average of 21-pound weight loss over four months from somebody who has either regained their weight or completely stalled out.
Speaker: 21 pounds and absolutely a big part of it is the change of the diet, the whole foods aspect, but keeping that into tow. Cause I'm great at losing 50 pounds, dude. I could lose 50 pounds as a drop of hat in three months, you know, let me order Nutrisystem and I got this in the bag. But what happens when I don't care anymore about that number and I'm not doing the other inner work, I don't care.
Speaker: going to go back to who I was before. and And I guess that's kind of where i was coming from with the data, because you think about whether it's on an insurance company, it's on a self-insured employer, it's on the federal government paying for medical costs, that the total cost of covering someone who is morbidly obese or who goes on the GLP one, as soon as they come off, they get the weight right back. And and so you spend all this money, but then you didn't fix on the back end.
Speaker: It's really, really high. And so finding what the ah ROI of, hey, let me invest in this kind of thing, that if it's paired, it leads to these kind of different kinds of results. It seems like the economic incentives would be there for...
Speaker: even NIH, of federal government or private companies, because the insurers want to make more money, they would be incentivized to try to figure this kind of stuff out. I would agree. I think that it's hard for the insurance companies when they look at the statistics first off, like this this is incredibly high amount, you know, 50%.
Speaker: Those aren't the best odds, you know, when you go into the surgery. And I don't think you'll get any backing from the center on lifestyle change until they've defined what that lifestyle change has to look like. Or have on ah an understanding like we have here at the rewrite that is not a one size fits all situation.
Speaker: everyone's going to have a different approach. Everyone, some people are going to be able to eat those things I just told you I can't eat and they will be fine and healthy and have it nailed down. So I think it would be a game changer for everybody. I didn't have it. i mean, I never even like started, i like was fan.
Speaker: year and a half into my recovery. When I started there, I didn't start the rewrite intentionally. I was on TikTok talking about food addiction. And somebody asked me if they could PayPal me $50 to coach them. That's how this started. i didn't have any intention. I had a a nine to five job selling Google ads. And then all of a sudden this happened. And, you know, we have an app coming out this week, a food tracking app that encompasses the emotional eating aspect that's happening. And we've just blossomed. There's something going on. Like I tapped into something that the surgical centers cannot seem to tap into. And the only, it boils down to two things is that we're not gonna talk about food addiction. So they've already kind of ruled that one out. But the secondly, people need to hear from somebody who's been there and gets it, not from somebody who just read it.
Speaker: And the credential of having the surgery losing the weight, keeping it off and making all those changes is a missing key piece for long-term success. Most of us don't go through these wild changes in life without having someone help us. Even in AA, I have a sponsor, right?
Speaker: Even if I decided I want a therapist, I could get a therapist tomorrow, right? You have to have someone to help you make these big changes. You cannot just do them by yourself. I mean, it's a literal hero's journey going back to Gilgamesh and all the way to Obi-Wan Luke Skywalker. Guide is important for that hero's journey. So I appreciate all your work and guidance, Shamil. For those listening who want to learn more about you and the rewrite, where can they find you?
Speaker: Yeah. So we are on Facebook, on the Bariatric Rewrite private group. We have an entire encompassing group. We post five educational pieces a day, a lot of the things we we touched on today, we have an app that is launching on Tuesday, the 24th of April, and that is called Rewrite Lifestyle. It's a food tracking app for bariatric patients, fall use you on your journey, the pre-app diet, the the liquids phase, all that fun stuff. um And you can also find me on TikTok as coach underscore Chanel. But if you just type in that girl with purple hair, bariatric that gets you there real quick. Wonderful.
Speaker: Well, I really appreciate I I've certainly learned a lot and I'm sure our listeners did as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. You too. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the home of health span podcast.
Speaker: And remember you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other health span role models on a lively.com. Enjoy a lively day.
